Under existing body armor designs, both female and male torso armor are designed and tested as flat panels. It would be preferable for armor to conform to the user's body shape, to improve its comfort and concealability among other advantages. Some designs exist which provide 3-dimensional shapes for female torsos. However, those few female body armor designs which provide shaping to accommodate the female bust require special manufacturing molds, adding expense to the product and to the performance testing. In addition, these special manufacturing molds do not address male torsos, which can vary in shape due to differing degrees of user muscle mass.
Some body armor designs include a plurality of penetrator-resistant panels inserted into pockets or otherwise attached to a carrier garment worn on the torso. However, such carrier garments are typically not fitted to the varying torso shapes of different users, including female bust lines and male pectoral shapes, since such shaping would require that the carrier garments be specially produced. As a result, the comfort and concealability of this type of armor also suffers due to poor conformance of the shape to the user.
For most military and commercial applications, custom carrier garments are not a viable option. Even if a plurality of different standard sizes and shapes were produced, it would be necessary to provide hundreds of different size and shape options to provide good conformance and concealability, which renders this approach almost as difficult and impractical as custom fitting.
What is needed, therefore, is a torso armor carrier that can be adjusted to accommodate varying torso shapes without requiring special manufacturing, custom manufacture, or manufacture of hundreds of different size and shape options.